Secure Identification in Social Wireless Networks

The applications based on social networking have brought revolution towards social life and are continuously gaining popularity among the Internet users. Due to the advanced computational resources offered by the innovative hardware and nominal subscriber charges of network operators, most of the online social networks are transforming into the mobile domain by offering exciting applications and games exclusively designed for users on the go. Moreover, the mobile devices are considered more personal as compared to their desktop rivals, so there is a tendency among the mobile users to store sensitive data like contacts, passwords, bank account details, updated calendar entries with key dates and personal notes on their devices. The Project Social Wireless Network Secure Identification (SWIN) is carried out at Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS) to explore the practicality of providing the secure mobile social networking portal with advanced security features to tackle potential security threats by extending the existing methods with more innovative security technologies. In addition to the extensive background study and the determination of marketable use-cases with their corresponding security requirements, this thesis proposes a secure identification design to satisfy the security dimensions for both online and offline peers. We have implemented an initial prototype using PHP Socket and OpenSSL library to simulate the secure identification procedure based on the proposed design. The design is in compliance with 3GPP‟s Generic Authentication Architecture (GAA) and our implementation has demonstrated the flexibility of the solution to be applied independently for the applications requiring secure identification. Finally, the thesis provides strong foundation for the advanced implementation on mobile platform in future

Analysis of the latest trends in mobile commerce using the NFC technology

The aim of this research is to propose new mobile commerce proximity payment architecture, based on the analysis of existing solutions and current and future market needs. The idea is to change a Mobile Device into a reliable and secure payment tool, available to everyone and with possibility to securely and easily perform purchases and proximity paymentsThe research leading to these results has received funding by the ARTEMISA project TIN2009-14378-C02-02 within the Spanish "Plan Nacional de I+D+I", and the Madrid regional community projects S2009/TIC-1650 and CCG10-UC3M/TIC-4992

The survey on Near Field Communication

PubMed ID: 26057043Near Field Communication (NFC) is an emerging short-range wireless communication technology that offers great and varied promise in services such as payment, ticketing, gaming, crowd sourcing, voting, navigation, and many others. NFC technology enables the integration of services from a wide range of applications into one single smartphone. NFC technology has emerged recently, and consequently not much academic data are available yet, although the number of academic research studies carried out in the past two years has already surpassed the total number of the prior works combined. This paper presents the concept of NFC technology in a holistic approach from different perspectives, including hardware improvement and optimization, communication essentials and standards, applications, secure elements, privacy and security, usability analysis, and ecosystem and business issues. Further research opportunities in terms of the academic and business points of view are also explored and discussed at the end of each section. This comprehensive survey will be a valuable guide for researchers and academicians, as well as for business in the NFC technology and ecosystem.Publisher's Versio

Implementing a Loyalty Card for smartphones using a Bitcoin Like Approach

Cryptographic currencies have been thriving in the last 5 years, specially since the appearance of Bitcoin in 2009. Factors, as the particular advantages of this type of currency, the current economy conjecture and the evolution of technology are fuelling their popularity. In some countries, cryptographic currency systems are considered to be feasible alternatives to real money by the government and Bitcoin is actually being used in transactions worldwide. The success of Bitcoin is mostly due to its elegant mathematical description, proven security under its assumptions, its decentralized character and anonymity assurance. Apart from the initial effort to securely and correctly implement the system and of the maintenance of the applications, Bitcoin works automatically with the contribution of the nodes of a fully decentralized infrastructure. The full specification of the protocol is readily available, e.g., in the Internet, and it can be used by anyone. This masters programme explored the possibility to use it, with modifications, as a means to implement a system for electronic loyalty cards. In order to do so, the aforementioned cryptographic currency was studied in detail, a set of requirements for the new system and modifications to the original protocol were specified, and a software system was engineered and implemented in the Java programming language. The specification of the modifications was performed while taking the particular application scenario into account. The restrictions deriving from the application scenario were mostly dominated by the fact that the underlying Peer-to-Peer (P2P) infrastructure was to be constituted by smartphones only. The most visible outcome of this masters programme is the fully working prototype of the loyalty card system, comprised by an application for mobile devices and by a server side application. This prototype implements part of the Bitcoin from scratch, starting from the seminal work that defines it, along with the modifications that introduce a central agent for better controlling the quantity of currency per client and aid in the establishment of the P2P connections between two mobile applications. The modified version of the system is herein called Bitpoints, and the currency is instead constituted by points. The implemented loyalty card system benefits of some of the advantages of the popular cryptographic currency, namely the public access to the ledger for isolated verification of all transactions. The loyalty card permits the exchange of points between users and mining new points, which is fundamentally different than currently available loyalty cards. Within the context of this masters programme, a survey was delivery to a population constituted of 34 individuals, who answered a set of questions concerning the handling of the aforementioned prototype. The analysis of the obtained results allows to induce that people would feel comfortable with this application and accept the concept on which is based on, probably preferring a system similar to the proposed one.As moedas criptográficas têm vindo a prosperar nos últimos cinco anos, especialmente desde o aparecimento da Bitcoin em 2009. Fatores como as vantagens específicas deste tipo de moedas, a atual conjetura económica e a evolução tecnológica, estão a estimular a sua popularidade. Em alguns países, os sistemas monetários criptográficos são considerados pelo governo, alternativas viáveis ao dinheiro real e a Bitcoin está efetivamente a ser utilizada em transações por todo o mundo. O sucesso da Bitcoin é essencialmente baseado na sua elegante descrição matemática, segurança comprovada pelos seus princípios, pelo seu carácter descentralizado e pela garantia de anonimato. Para além do esforço inicial para implementar corretamente e de forma segura o sistema, e da manutenção das aplicações, a Bitcoin funciona automaticamente com a contribuição dos nós de uma infraestrutura descentralizada. A especificação completa do protocolo está facilmente disponível, por exemplo na Internet, e pode ser utilizada por qualquer pessoa. Este programa de mestrado explorou a possibilidade de usá-lo, com modificações, como uma forma de implementar um sistema de cartões de fidelização eletrónicos. De forma a fazer isso, a moeda criptográfica acima mencionada, foi estudada em detalhe, foram especificados um conjunto de requisitos para o novo sistema e modificações ao protocolo original, e um sistema em software foi projetado e implementado na linguagem de programação Java. A especificação das modificações foi realizada, tendo em conta o cenário desta aplicação em particular. As restrições resultantes do cenário da aplicação foram maioritariamente dominadas pelo fato de que a infraestrutura Peer-to-Peer (P2P) subjacente era constituída apenas por smartphones. O resultado mais visível deste programa de mestrado é o protótipo completamente funcional de um sistema de cartões de fidelização, composto por uma aplicação para dispositivos móveis, e outra para ser executada do lado do servidor. Este protótipo implementa de raiz, a parte do Bitcoin, a partir do trabalho seminal que o define, juntamente com as alterações que introduzem um agente central para controlar melhor a quantidade de moedas por cliente, e auxiliar no estabelecimento de ligações P2P entre duas aplicações móveis. A versão modificada do sistema é aqui chamada de Bitpoints e a moeda é em vez disso, constituída por pontos. Os benefícios da implementação deste sistema de cartões de fidelização, e de algumas das vantagens da popular moeda criptográfica são, nomeadamente o acesso público à cadeia de blocos para verificação isolada de todas as transações. O cartão de fidelização permite a troca de pontos entre utilizadores e novos pontos de mineração, que é fundamentalmente diferente dos cartões de fidelização atualmente disponíveis. Dentro do contexto deste programa de mestrado, foi distribuído um inquérito por uma população de 34 indivíduos, que responderam a um conjunto de questões relativas ao manuseamento do protótipo referido anteriormente. A análise dos resultados obtidos permitiu induzir que as pessoas se sentem confortáveis com a aplicação, e que aceitaram o conceito na qual esta é baseada, preferindo provavelmente um sistema semelhante ao proposto